Abstract

A significant improvement in the dynamic response time of the in-plane switching nematic liquid crystal mode, useful in flat-panel display applications, is achieved through polymer stabilization. This improvement is achieved by introducing a low-density, stabilizing polymer network that causes the nematic director to favor the zero-field orientation at the expense of transmission and slightly higher drive voltages. We present a simple model that treats the polymer network as an effective field in the general framework of elastic continuum theory.